Monday, 10 February 2014

Hostage to fortune

The anti-smoking lobby's track record of predicting the future is notoriously pisspoor. ASH's 'Myth and Reality About Smokefree England' was such a humdinger that virtually all the 'myths' had become reality within a few months of the smoking ban being introduced. Likewise, reassurances that food and alcohol would not be treated in the same way as cigarettes have proven to be hilariously hollow.

Here’s a brief history of the antismoking madness (Godber Blueprint) over the last few decades.

The first demand for a smoking ban was in the late-1980s concerning short-haul flights in the USA of less than 2 hours. At the time, the antismokers were asked if this was a “slippery slope” – where would it end? They ridiculed anyone suggesting such because this ban was ALL that they were after. Then they ONLY wanted smoking bans on all flights.Then the antismokers ONLY wanted nonsmoking sections in restaurants, bars, etc., and ensuring that this was ALL they wanted.Then the antismokers ONLY wanted complete bans indoors. That was all they wanted. At the time, no-one was complaining about having to “endure” wisps of smoke outdoors.

While they pursued indoor bans, the antismokers were happy for smokers to be exiled to the outdoors. Having bulldozed their way into indoor bans, the antismokers then went to work on the outdoors, now declaring that momentary exposure to remnants of smoke in doorways or a whiff outdoors was a “hazard”, more than poor, innocent nonsmokers should have to “endure”.Then they ONLY wanted bans within 10 feet of entrance ways.Then they ONLY wanted bans within 20 feet of entrance ways.Then they ONLY wanted bans in entire outdoor dining areas.Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire university and hospital campuses and parks and beaches.Then they ONLY wanted bans for apartment balconies.Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire apartment (including individual apartments) complexes.

On top of all of this, there are now instances, particularly in the USA, where smokers are denied employment, denied housing (even the elderly), and denied medical treatment. Smokers in the UK are denied fostering/adoption. Involuntary mental patients are restrained physically or chemically (sedation) or multi-day solitary confinement rather than allow them to have a cigarette – even outside. In some countries there are also compounded extortionate taxes.

At each point there was a crazed insistence that there was no more to come while they were actually planning the next ban and the brainwashing required to push it. The incessant claim was that they were not doing “social engineering” (prohibition) when the current antismoking crusade has been so from the outset, just like pretty well every previous antismoking crusade. There has been incessant (pathological) lying and deception. Many medically-aligned groups have been committed to antismoking – their smokefree “utopia” – since the 1960s, and are also in the pay of Pharma companies peddling their useless “nicotine replacement” products. They have prostituted their medical authority and integrity to chase ideology (this is exactly what occurred in the eugenics of early last century). All of it is working to a tobacco-extermination plan run by the WHO (dominated by the American “model”) and that most nations are now signed-up to (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control).

The sanctimony and self-serving blather of these buffoons is extraordinary. It is their incessant blathering that is an insult to intelligence. They’ve been using the same con for the last few decades; they have been shown to be wrong, i.e., duplicitous, time and time again. Disturbing is that it can still be used successfully by these pathological liars on an essentially dumbed-down populace. It’s like Groundhog Day: Yep, the clock alarm just sounded, it’s 6.00am, and, of course, the antismoking nutcases are circulating their current “myth list”.

1.The term “Godber Blueprint” is the name given by the author at this web site (rampant-antismoking dot com ) to a collection of archival information concerning antismoking activity. It’s detailed information that’s only come to light in the last few years. It’s assumed that the “Blueprint” was associated with Godber’s name because, at the time, he was the most vocal and rabid zealot at the World Conferences on Smoking & Health that the other zealots in attendance looked up to.

The World Conferences occurred through the sponsorship of the World Health Organization. Godber was a WHO representative. Godber has long since died and the WHO continues the de facto prohibition crusade, now administering the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that most countries are signed up to. The “Godber Blueprint” could now be referred to as the “WHO Blueprint”.

Important to note is that the rabid antismoking zealots were making numerous inflammatory claims, e.g., passive smoke “harm” and “social cost” years before any “evidence”, contrived as it eventually was. For example, the first “study” on secondhand smoke was in 1981 by the antismoker, Hirayama – an entirely forced line of enquiry, and 18 years before the flawed, agenda-driven EPA Report (1993) that declared SHS a “danger” to nonsmokers. Also, Godber was referring to smokers as “addicts” in 1975 although tobacco smoking was not considered an addiction at the time. Smoking was incoherently redefined as an “addiction” (a throwback to 1800s America) in 1988 by the Office of the Surgeon-General that by then had been hijacked by the same antismoking zealots. What we’ve witnessed over the last 30 years is the trash thinking of zealots later “legitimized” by their own trash “research” and peddled through zealot-hijacked organizations – manipulation through “appeal to authority”, e.g., Office of the Surgeon-General.

This is why the information in the Godber Blueprint is critical. It highlights that the current antismoking crusade – like most before – is a moralizing, social engineering, eradication/prohibition crusade, and has been so from the outset. It is the attempt, through denormalizing propaganda, to turn smoking into an “immoral” and “shameful” act not fit for public view. But the antismoking fanatics/zealots/extremists recognized in the 1970s that there were few takers for social engineering. Particularly in relatively free societies, including America and the peculiar state of California, coercive measures to conformity were viewed as repugnant by the majority.

The zealots had all sorts of coercive measures in mind – extortionate taxes, smoking bans - indoor and outdoor. But they recognized that the social engineering crusade had all but stalled. They were already talking in the late-70s that the only way forward was to convince nonsmokers that secondhand smoke exposure was a threat to their health despite there being no evidence for such an inflammatory claim.

So, since the 80s we’ve had self-installed social engineers (and their financial partners – government & Big Pharma) telling the public that they weren’t doing social engineering, that they weren’t moralizing, that they weren’t trying to force smokers to quit. They concocted storylines to masquerade their social engineering intent. Extortionate, punitive taxes – well, so their storyline goes, is because smokers are a “cost burden” to society and with concocted reports stating as much. Smoking bans – well, they’re necessary to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke “danger”. “There’s no slippery slope; we’re not doing social engineering”, squealed the zealots. They’re lies that have been told many times over during the last three decades. And governments around the world got suckered in by the inflammatory rhetoric and the appeal of easy tax money, i.e., license to extort.

2.It’s only in the last few years that the zealots and their useful-idiot politicians are up front about the moralizing and social engineering, speaking of “denormalization” in glowing terms. For example, this just recently:“She said allowing the devices (e-cigarettes) into places where cigarettes are now banned also could "renormalize" smoking and undermine the public perception that the habit is now acceptable only in the privacy of one's own home.”http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/12/19/4556523/vote-coming-on-adding-e-cigarettes.html#.UrT2iHrZiSp

George Godber – 1975: “I imagine that most of us here know full well that our target must be, in the long-term, the elimination of cigarette smoking…… We may not have eliminated cigarette smoking completely by the end of this century, but we ought to have reached a position where a relatively few addicts still use cigarettes, but only in private at most in the company of consenting adults.”[Remember, this statement was made 6 years before the very first, forced study on secondhand smoke by the antismoker Hirayama and 18 years before the flawed EPA(1993) Report that declared secondhand smoke as a “hazard” to nonsmokers]

Mike Daube has been with the current antismoking crusade from its early days. Here’s an article by Daube of only a year ago (2012) that reiterates the Godber Blueprint:

“Extending restrictions on smoking in any environment so that it essentially becomes a practice only for consenting adults in private.”http://theconversation.com/bring-on-the-end-of-tobacco-use-but-not-a-total-ban-tomorrow-8881

The banning of smoking in cars where children are present is just the latest step in removing another place where people smoke, dressed up for a gullible public as “protecting” The Children™.

Unfortunately the BBC views deeply prejudiced speculative garbage from the Royal College of Physicians as "evidence" from "research". A lot of people rely on the BBC for their information and its online news team seem unable to distinguish between objective quality research and poisonous speculation from pressure groups.

Who needs proof when you can print utter crap and get away with it being broadcast uncritically to the world?

By the time it becomes law, the ban will have been extended to all cars. Cheeldren or no cheeeldren.

It is unenforceable and designed to be so, for that reason. The police cannot check every smoking driver in case there's a child hidden in the boot or glovebox, or five children pedalling under the bonnet to save petrol. Hm. Must patent that idea.

Therefore the only solution is to make the law simple enough that even an antismoker can understand it. Pare it down to 'ban smoking in cars'.

By the time the law comes into effect, their 'Myth 7' will already have been debunked.

About Me

Writer and researcher at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blogging in a personal capacity.
Author of Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism (2015), The Art of Suppression (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion (2010) and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (2009).

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."